Lunar Guidance
by EvilDime
Summary: Luna Lovegood is not the person that immediately comes to mind when in need of relationship advice. But maybe Harry could have done worse. (HP/GW, epilogue-compliant)


_**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter and make no money with what I write here._

_**Beta: **DWJ-Fan, Poet of Babylon_

_**A/N: **__W__ritten for this year's Quidditch League, Round 1 of the Little League, as Beater for Hufflepuff. Topic: „_**_Friends Are The Family We Choose For Ourselves _****\- **_Everyone loves a good friendship story, and we're here to write more friendship stories as there can never be enough. It's not just any friendship though, no, your individual position requirements are below… We don't want even a hint of romance!" …Beater 2 requirement: "Inter-house friendship". Additional prompts chosen: 5. (style) third person present tense, 8. (word) partner, 14. (song) ‚You are not alone' by Michael Jackson, 15. (word) holding._

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**Lunar Guidance**

_by Dime_

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„May I kiss you?"

She blinks. „Is that a good idea?"

„…Probably not. I am sorry. Forget I asked."

A frown. „No, I believe this is why I came here, so please tell me about it."

Harry sits back with a deep sigh. He discards his previously abandoned mug of tea and gestures for Luna to take a seat. Once they are both comfortably ensconced in the living room armchairs, each holding a nice fresh cup of Neville's home-grown peachtree fizzing brew, Harry asks: „That is why you came? Did you know I would ask you for a kiss?"

„Don't be silly." Luna gives him that benevolent smile that says _What I am telling you here is completely obvious to everyone with half a brain, but since that appears to be less than one percent of the wizarding population of Great Britain, I forgive you._ „I did not know until you asked."

Harry has a feeling that her answer to what to _him_ is an obvious question will likely not explain anything, but as usual, he goes ahead and asks regardless. If not illuminating, at least her answers are usually either amusing or inspirational; sometimes both. „How can my question be the reason you came to see me today if you did not know I would ask it?"

Luna is a nice person, so she never loses her calm even when people fail to see the obvious. „I came because you needed me." Then with an impish grin she adds: „Besides, you said the magic words."

Harry chokes on his tea.

Twenty minutes ago, he has been sitting on the sofa with his two-year-old son napping in his lap, listening to the radio and considering his life.

„This sucks badly," he grumbled while Michael Jackson's voice proclaimed sweetly _Whisper__ three words and I__'ll come runnin'_. It was exactly at that moment that a knock on the door announced an unexpected visitor.

Getting up with a sleepily grizzling child in his arms, Harry opened the door to find Luna in front of it, dressed in a flowery yellow robe and wearing an endearing smile. „You called?" she had said by way of greeting, which at the time Harry had not at all connected with the song on the radio, nor with his own muttering.

Now, he wonders. Raising one eyebrow at Luna, he says mildly: „If magic spells were as easy as saying _This sucks badly_ and voilà, a friend appears to solve all my problems, I would never have bothered with a wand."

The same smile as before appears on Luna's face as she answers: „You know what Professor Dumbledore would have said to that."

Just like Luna's smile, Harry's raised eyebrow does not change. „'Love is the greatest magic of all?'"

„I was thinking more along the lines of ‚Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!', but that works, too."

„Of course." The eyebrow lowers. It is actually hard work keeping it raised for this long.

Luna's smile never changes.

Harry sulks.

„So tell me," Luna gets them back on track, „why would you want to kiss me? I know you neither love nor fancy me."

Harry flushes. While Luna rarely directly calls things by their name, when she does, she usually hits the billywig on its head.

„You do love Ginny, though, as well as your son."

Now Harry feels the need to protest. „If you count the love I have for my child, then I _do_ actually love you. It is not the same love I have for Ginny, whom I do fancy, but certainly the same as the little one." Looking at her very seriously, Harry continues: „You are my family, Luna, and I love you as a sister. Please never doubt that."

Rather than offended by his confirmation that he has no romantic feelings for her, Luna appears highly amused. „And as your sister, you wish to kiss me?"

Harry's flush deepens. „That was aimed at you as _a woman who is not Ginny_ rather than _the friend I love as a sister_."

„You know there is only one of me," Luna says with a questioning lilt in her voice.

It is mildly disquieting to have Luna Lovegood questioning your sanity. „Of course! I believe I already apologized, but if you need me to repeat it, I will gladly say it again: I did not mean to offend you, and I am sorry if I did."

„You did not," Luna says easily. „There is no reason to apologize. You do, however, need to find out for yourself why you would propose to kiss your sister."

Harry sulks again. „I do know."

„Really?" Her imitation of his raised eyebrow is perfect.

„I've just never kissed another woman! I thought maybe you wouldn't mind, alright?"

There. He's blurted it out. Let her make of it what she would.

Maybe, considering who he is talking to, the blurt method has not been the wisest choice.

Luna laughs. And laughs.

Harry stoically sips at his tea, trying and failing to will away his blush.

Finally, Luna calms down and her eyes focus on Harry's once more, the corners still crinkled in amusement. "You do realize, of course, that kissing me will not answer your actual question."

"Which is?" Harry tries not to show it, but he is very eager to hear Luna's answer. He doesn't know himself why he has been thinking about kissing other women lately, when he is still as much in love with Ginny as he's ever been. Luna may be a bit odd at times, but through their years of friendship, Harry has come to realize that behind the talk of snorkacks and glumbumbles, Luna is highly perceptive of the worlds both seen and unseen. If anyone can tell him what is wrong with him, it is Luna. So he waits with baited breath for her next words.

"You are afraid of losing yourself," is what Luna tells him. She leaves it there, but a little Luna voice in the back of his head mercilessly elaborates: _Back at Hogwarts, you used to define yourself through Quidditch, your friends, and your fight against Voldemort. You knew you were bad at school, bad with girls and you had no future. It was no the best of lives, but you knew who you were. Now, you have a loving wife, children, a job that is turning more and more into a desk job since your __promotion. __You are wondering where Harry Potter went, the boy who went up against dragons and Death Eaters._

"Ouch." That is not fun to hear. It does, however, ring true. Not surprising, considering that most of it has been hatched in his own head. But. "How does this connect to me wanting to kiss another woman?"

That annoying, too-knowledgeable smile is back. "The only girl you ever kissed before you got together with Ginny was Cho, and let's face it: the entire school knows it wasn't very good."

Harry makes a choked sound of protest, but while Luna herself stops there, again the little Luna voice in his head happily babbles on, still audibly smiling. _Now that you are questioning yourself, it is only logical that you would also question your job, your partner, your relationship. You want to know if your life had gone a different way, if you were with a different woman, or had a different job, would you be more like the boy you used to be?_

Harry's cup is empty. He does not notice as he stares down at the bottom, his hand petting the sleeping child in his lap on auto-pilot. As usual, Luna has nailed it – or rather, the real Luna together with his mental representation of all things Luna have nailed it.

Either way, he is now pretty sure that Luna is right with what she said earlier. Kissing another woman will not fix this. And kissing Luna might actually make it spectacularly worse – who knows, he might end up as a frog, just because.

"Then what do I do?" he asks her.

Luna never loses her smile, only now instead of annoying him, it gives Harry hope. Luna did not smile at Malfoy Manor. She did not smile during the battle of Hogwarts. If she is smiling now, things certainly cannot be as bad as he imagined.

"It is simple, really," Luna explains. "Ask yourself this: If you could give up everything you have now and go straight back to the way things have been, would you want to?"

"Senior Auror Wendryks taught us: _Backwards is never the right way to go; always go forward," _Harry quotes.

Luna blinks in surprise. "I did not know the Aurors ever taught anything worth-while."

"He did not, trust me," Harry says wryly. "He was my fighting instructor; he died two years ago in a skirmish against the remaining Death Eaters when his team decided on an ordered retreat and he, instead, kept going forward."

"Umh," Luna says. "Still, as a life lesson, it is good advice, don't you think?"

Harry considers. He used to have adventures, fun, friendship, romance... until the adventures turned lethal, the friends he had fun with kept dying and romance was a decidedly prickly and short-lived thing.

Now, he has the family he always dreamed of; a job he excels at, not because of his fame, but on true merit; and a world around him in which his friends can live in peace.

And he has children, one in his lap right now and another on the way.

He would not trade this for the world.

He shakily smiles at Luna. "I'm an idiot, aren't I?"

"You are not. You're just a regular guy questioning his life once he comes down from the constant adrenaline rush of his dangerous youth."

Just a regular guy. Harry likes that idea.

"Of course, knowing this will not make your disquiet go away," Luna bursts his bubble.

"What will, then?"

"You could talk to Ginny about your desires and hope for her approval -"

"Yeah. Right," Harry mumbles.

"- or you can differentiate between the things you never had and the ones you actually want."

"Huh?"

"You decided to kiss me because you never kissed another grown woman besides Ginny. Do you actually want to _kiss me_, though?"

"Um. Meaning no offense, but..."

"That's what I thought." Luna does not appear ruffled in the slightest. "Then what _do_ you actually want to have that you don't?"

Thoughtful silence is her only answer. Luna smiles and gets up from the chair, setting down her empty tea cup. "Thank you for the tea, Harry. It was lovely to chat."

Harry gets up, carefully lays his sleeping son down in a bassinet, and hugs Luna for all he is worth. "Thanks for the talk, sis'."

"Any time," she answers. "Just say three words..."

In a mood so much lighter than just an hour ago, Harry watches her skip down the lane towards the woods, until she disapparates with a distant _crack_.

_~ The End ~_


End file.
